Overtraining in Athletes

Hey this is Dr. Gangemi, and in this Sockdoc video I want to talk about Overtraining. Basically pushing your body past that point of adaptation, so you no longer adapt to your activity, but you start to become injured or ill or even sick. Because of course by ill I meant, down here in the South, we considered ill to be just a really bad attitude, like you’re just ill to somebody else. That’s what the old timers say down here.

Actually if you’re are overtraining, then what’s happening before you even become injured or sick that you’re actually having other small little problems to distinguish that you’re actually pushing your body too much. Such as adrenal gland issue, maybe you’re starting to squint at the light, you’re starting to squint at a cloudy day while you’re outside, and you always feel like you need to wear sunglasses. You might get dizzy when you stand up quick, your blood pressure is dropping, that’s called orthostatic hypotension. As you go from laying down in your bed, and you get up maybe too quick, your blood pressure doesn’t respond properly. That’s a sign that you’re overtraining.

You might have little aches and pains in your joints that you didn’t have before. You might not be sleeping well, you’re getting high cortisol level at night when you should be lower, your melatonin level should be high at night, your cortisol levels should be low. Your blood sugar should be properly regulated, but if you’re pushing your body too hard, and getting it overtraining or under resting, under recovery, then the next thing you know, you’re having blood sugar issues, and high stress formal levels while you sleep. And you’ll wake up during sleep. Maybe even just to go to the bathroom, go take a pee one time. You actually should be sleeping through the night, and not waking up no matter how much water you drank.

So don’t forget that I’ve talked about in some other Sockdoc videos that training is exercise plus recovery. It’s exercise plus rest, but I like to say also in the Sockdoc training principles, that it’s working out plus the daily stress of your life, and that needs to be weighted or balanced against recovery and rest, both those together. So that means that training if you’re pushing yourself too hard with your training, that you can also push yourself too hard in life too. Which means you can’t be working 60, 70 hours a week, you can’t have too many family projects or activities going on, and still expect to train too hard or too long of a duration.

That’s the one problem that I have with people doing high intensity interval training, HIIT workouts, and they talk about how those are great for a time constraint individual. But if you do those you’re pumping out a lot of cortisol, a lot of stress hormones adrenaline from your body. And that’s going to be hard to recover, especially when you’re already increasing your cortisol levels from working too hard, and doing too much in your daily life. And then the rest, the recovery part of the equation is not just sleep, of course if you’re pushing yourself too hard as I just mentioned, and you’re not recovering well, if you’re not sleeping well, that’s an issue right there in that alone. But also the other half of that recovery is you eating well, and you taking care of yourself, active recovering days. Going out and moving on your rest days, like today I’m paddle boarding, and just moving my body, and going through ranges of motion, and recovering from strenuous activity days.

But a big part of that rest and recovery is also your diet. Are you eating really well? Are you staying away from refined sugars, refined flours, a lot of caffeine? Are you eating a good amount of fat? Like breast fed beef, and pasture eggs, and wild fish, of course butter, and bacon are two of my favorite fats. Coconut oil too, olive oil, and nuts and seeds, all these anti inflammatory highly effective, anti-inflammatory type of fats. As well as anabolic type hormone developing fats too. That’s what helps you recover, it’s really good fats. Are you eating enough protein too?

So when you get into overtraining, don’t jst think about how hard you’re training, and maybe you need to chill out on the training, but also do you need to recover and rest more. Think about warning signs that you get, like dizzy when you stand up, your eyes feeling sensitive to light, even loud noises too, your ears feeling sensitive to loud noises. Just overstimulated all over, maybe you’re getting like irritable blood sugar handling swings when you’re starting to push yourself too hard. so check in with yourself before you actually overtrain, and become injured or sick.

So I hope you enjoyed the Sockdoc video. Check out all the other videos I’ve got on YouTube, and of course on my website Sockdoc. Lots of information out there on the new site. Injury training and training and fitness issues. We’ve got of course injury prevention and treatment. All natural injury treatment, and prevention. Health topics from sleep to asthma, everything in between, and of course your reviews. Check us out, and hope you enjoyed this video. Thanks for watching.

Dr. Stephen Gangemi "Sock Doc"

I'm a board-certified chiropractic physician and clinical nutritionist with a passion for true natural health care. I implement dietary & nutritional therapies, exercise & movement practices, and lifestyle changes along with manual therapy techniques to help the body heal and prevent illness and injuries.